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Conservative Japanese Strategy
Posted: Fri Jul 28, 2006 5:14 pm
by niceguy2005
I have been reading (via the Internet) about the Allied campaign in New Guinea. What strikes me as I read this is how the Japanese tried to shift resources from one theater to anohter to try and counter the Allied onslaught. Often this resulted in Japanese forces being out of position and/or isolated. For example much of the air and naval power available to the Mariana's defense was moved to New Guinea to counter the allied offensive against Biak, to no avail. One possible conclusion to draw from this is that the Japanese tried to control too much territory with to little force - a conclusion that is probably not uncommon among historians.
This leads me to wonder if any Japanese players thus far have tried a more conservative approach to the war. Possibly trying to conquer much less territory than historically was the case. This would be quite different given that most Japanese players I have seen actually try to conquer more territory.
What would have happened had the Japanese never included New Guinea or the Solomons in their defensive perimiter, but instead started with Kendari and Morotai? What would have happened had the Marianas really been the first line of defense, instead of Tarawa?
RE: Conservative Japanese Strategy
Posted: Fri Jul 28, 2006 5:24 pm
by RUPD3658
The problem with Japan is that come late 43 the Allies can take any base they want. Even a few well defended bases closer in can still be taken or even bypassed.
By pushing the perimiter out further it takes more time to get within range of the HI. It also allows for defense in depth in the sence of having your Nells/Betties at bases out of range of Allied LBA but within range to attack shipping near or just inside the defensive perimiter.
Historically Japan was very conservative and we all know how that turned out.
RE: Conservative Japanese Strategy
Posted: Fri Jul 28, 2006 5:37 pm
by mogami
Hi, Pushing the defense out farther does nothing to gain time if the outer limits are broken and nothing is within. The enemy just makes very deep movements after that first break through. The defense has to PREVENT a breakthrough and concentration of force and mutal supporting forces does this better then isolated forces far on the rim. There are certain places Japan canot giveup without a fight and the defense cannot be prepared as an after thought. Japan has to start building the defense at start of war. (It requires many engineer/support units and supply and then strong defensive formations have to be alloted and transported. ) It is too late to think of defense when Allied player has aquired offensive might. Japanese bases will be isolated during at least part of the defensive battle. As a result they must be overstocked.
RE: Conservative Japanese Strategy
Posted: Fri Jul 28, 2006 5:37 pm
by niceguy2005
ORIGINAL: RUPD3658
The problem with Japan is that come late 43 the Allies can take any base they want. Even a few well defended bases closer in can still be taken or even bypassed.
By pushing the perimiter out further it takes more time to get within range of the HI. It also allows for defense in depth in the sence of having your Nells/Betties at bases out of range of Allied LBA but within range to attack shipping near or just inside the defensive perimiter.
Historically Japan was very conservative and we all know how that turned out.
I guess what I'm suggesting is I don't know if Japan was all that conservative. They tried three times to take PM. They trade to take Midway which cost them dearly. They didn't really stick to their original strategy of 6 months and then defend. They may have over committed.
One school of thought certainly would seem to be achieve a large defense perimeter and then fall back fighting. I think this was Japans historical strategy, or at least their plan B, in case the allies failed to meet them in that single decisive battle.
A second school of thought might be, it is a lot less likely that you will be able to win, or possibly even fight a decisive battle if you are spread all over the Pacific and half the Indian Ocean. By consolidating ones fores, a commander actually gains flexibility for a possible counter offensive, or a decisive fight. I will however withdraw my statement about making the Mairans the front line of defense. It's too close to the HI. I would suggest that it MAY be possible that New Guinea and the Solomons though are not prime defenisible ground, nor are the Gilberts. How tough would Japan have been if they hadn't already been weakened by Midway and three failed attempts on Port Morseby?
I will grant you that the Allies will have such overwhelming force by the end of 43 that it almost won't matter what the Japanese do strategically. Would the Allies have been so deliberate though that they could resist the urge to counter attack too early, possibly giving Japan that final decisive battle they craved?
RE: Conservative Japanese Strategy
Posted: Fri Jul 28, 2006 5:42 pm
by mogami
Hi, The time Japan gains is not by holding distant bases but my making the Allied player wait till late 1943 to mount his first offensive. In all 3 PBEM games as Japan I am nearly 1 year ahead of historic Japanese because Allies have not recovered any base lost except the outer rim bases I took just to destroy Allied material. I did not commit to their defense but rather defended bases inside the outer ring. The Allied player of course had to prepare for a fight at these bases and was delayed as a result. The IJN remains intact in Sept 1943 in 1 game. Against Dadman I hurt my later defensive chances by piecmeal use of IJN on frontier.
My present plan for conduct of war as Japan is based on over 20 PBEM games. I started out life as a frontier fighter. Forward defense is much easier for allies to overcome and wears out Japan much earlier. (Don't commit to defense inside Allied air control you'll lose and then not have resources to defend bases that require Allied naval air to overcome. )
RE: Conservative Japanese Strategy
Posted: Fri Jul 28, 2006 5:48 pm
by RUPD3658
I think you hit the nail on the head about trying to force a decisive battle with the US. If Miday had gone the other way the war would have lasted into 46-47. Japan still would have lost but the Russians would have grabbed up more territory.
Japan is doomed from the start. All it can do is try to prolong the inevtiable. Whether that be massive battles close in or a series of smaller actions further out is a personal prefence. The problem with defending islands is that they can be bypassed.
The big thing is to keep the SRA and it's oil/resources out of range of 4E bombers for as long as possible. Same thing goes for Malaya.
RE: Conservative Japanese Strategy
Posted: Fri Jul 28, 2006 5:53 pm
by RUPD3658
ORIGINAL: Mogami
Hi, The time Japan gains is not by holding distant bases but my making the Allied player wait till late 1943 to mount his first offensive.
I agree. The optimal situation is that your outer rim is weakly defended but within range of your LBA. Also the outer rim is out of range of Allied fighter escort (you will never be out of 4E bomber range). If you can achieve this "Goldilocks" situation you will do OK as Japan.
RE: Conservative Japanese Strategy
Posted: Fri Jul 28, 2006 6:20 pm
by mogami
Hi, To decide how to defend you must understand what the enemy must do in order to defeat you. The Allied player will mount a major effort to sever communications between SRA and Home Islands/defense Zones.
Once this occurs Japan will be dependant on stocks of supply ALREADY PRESENT outside SRA. (SRA will continue to provide support for units inside SRA) A Japanese player who depletes his supply levels in Home Islands counting on recoving it from imports will discover that he requires well into 1942 to restore his prewar levels.
The supply he will require for the period after he loses imports will of course depend on when this occurs.
The ultimate airfields from Allied point of view are not saipan/Tinian/Guam but Clark and then fields on Formosa. So there exists a motivation for offensives that both secure these fields and cut off Home islands from imports.
So the Japanese player must ask himself."How much supply is required outside of SRA to maintain a maximum defense effort of Home Islands and defensive zones?" and "how long will I need to stockpile this amount?"
Japan may need to limit it's offensive/industrial expansion efforts in 1942 simply to preserve the supply required in 1944/45. (If Japan assigns 36 fighters each to provide CAP for 50 bases she will consume 1.3 million supply per year) Thats a mere 1800 fighters defending the Japanese empire from air attack. (to train another 1800 AC for a year would require another 1.3million supply) I hope this helps understand just how much supply requires and why the Allied player should attempt to prevent imports to Home Islands ASAP. All he needs is a size 7 airfield within 23 hexes of resource center. He ultimaly hopes for airfields that are in range of naval strike aircraft to routes between SRA/Home Islands/Defensive Zones.
RE: Conservative Japanese Strategy
Posted: Fri Jul 28, 2006 9:28 pm
by niceguy2005
ORIGINAL: RUPD3658
ORIGINAL: Mogami
Hi, The time Japan gains is not by holding distant bases but my making the Allied player wait till late 1943 to mount his first offensive.
I agree. The optimal situation is that your outer rim is weakly defended but within range of your LBA. Also the outer rim is out of range of Allied fighter escort (you will never be out of 4E bomber range). If you can achieve this "Goldilocks" situation you will do OK as Japan.
So does this mean you would fight for GC or Tarawa as a Japanese player? At what point does Japan give in and cede GC to the Allies?
RE: Conservative Japanese Strategy
Posted: Fri Jul 28, 2006 10:41 pm
by jwilkerson
The only (PBEM) games of either UV or WITP (or WPO) I've "won" (I only get to play Japanese) are when something has happened to cause my opponent to "quit" (or as we say "resign"). In UV/WITP this usually happens if the Japanese can engineer a fairly one-sided carrier battle sometime in 1942. Whereas in WPO substitute "Dreadnought" for "Carrier" and the same thing applies. As for the "end game" I've gotten 3 PBEM to Feb43, Sep43 and Jan44 respectively and really all the Japanese can do after about mid-43 is "hang on". I have used "smoke and mirrors" and "razzle-dazzle" to convince my opponents that I'm stronger than I really am and they generally have proceeded forward fairly slowly. But not sure there is a meaningful "victory" as Japan in the end game (against a roughly equal player) unless it is just being tenacious and hanging on and not getting embarrassed and occasionally punishing the Allies if they get careless. Any Japanese player who can do this well into '44 (like PzB!!) is a "winner" in my book. Also, per my opponents, playing the Japanese is "3 times harder" than playing the allies (their words not mine) so Japanese players start with a "I'm a WITP Japanese PBEM player" medal right from the start anyway. But by mid-44, they have earned the swords and diamonds to the knights cross to the "I'm a WITP J-PBEM Player" medal!!!
But, I don't think a plan to play "conservatively" right from the start would have worked IRL, nor would it work in the game. By keeping the Allies off balance for as long as possible, you retain the initiative for as long as possible and get greater predicatability of what will happen (you're fighting the battles you want to fight where and when you want to fight them). Throwing this advantage away willingly, doesn't seem indicated IMHO.
RE: Conservative Japanese Strategy
Posted: Fri Jul 28, 2006 11:04 pm
by mogami
Hi, Japan cedes any base when she can no longer provide support to defense. Everything Japan deploys to a base is expendable. It is unlikely Japan will ever be able to extract much from a base after she has lost control of the sea and air around it.
The problem is simple. How to decide how much to commit (throw away) in the defense of a base. It must be enough to force Allies into a major effort. The problem is then of course they win battles where they commit major effort.
RE: Conservative Japanese Strategy
Posted: Sat Jul 29, 2006 9:01 am
by Charles2222
You basically have to try what the Germans were doing in the USSR. You have to put up a line of defense and use some strong forces in reserve to throw the enemy back via counter-attacks. That seems the only workable solution, and if it were the real war, at least in the German's case, you would be hoping that it bought you time, time for the super weapon category to make a difference; the 262's, the KTigers, the blitz bomber and the V-weapons. Japan probably couldn't have managed much of any super-weapon hope (unles Gerry was doing well enough to loan you a bunch of weapons), especially since one area the germans almost didn't have to worry about at all was a primary worry for Japan; the sea, but the sea of course can to some degree be fought as you would use mobile forces on land. Catch is the Japanese probably couldn't hope to have anything like the aerial capability of the germans to cover their attacks if they wanted and a fleet of ships trying to counter-attack is easier to pick up than a couple of reserve panzer divisions.
RE: Conservative Japanese Strategy
Posted: Sun Jul 30, 2006 3:01 am
by mogami
Hi, That is where Japanese players get hoisted on their own petard. While they are attempting to hurt the Allies and keep them off balance they over step and get clobbered. Once they lose the material required to "scare" the allies into caution the enemy accellerates his progress.
It is a fine line the Japanese player must follow. He has to hit the enemy right from the start often and hard while never making that fatal mistake. Of course while he is winning his early victories he sows the seeds of his later defeat if he allows his airgroups to decline in quality or suffers loss of major ships (even a few at a time they add up)
when the Japanese player decides it is time to commit to defense he must not transmit this change to the enemy. They must continue to worry about where the Japanese are going to land next.
One "ah crap" will erase a thousand "atta boy" so you must avoid any defeat that inspires the enemy to transfer his efforts to offensive action. If I could tell you how to do this.............
RE: Conservative Japanese Strategy
Posted: Sun Jul 30, 2006 4:35 am
by pasternakski
ORIGINAL: Mogami
Hi, That is where Japanese players get hoisted on their own petard.
Mog, you ignorant slut. The past tense of "hoist" is "hoist." "I am hoist today, I was hoist yesterday, and I will be hoist tomorrow."
Before one of my early attempts at playing Japan in the campaign scenario, I spent a lot of time scrolling around the map and thinking the situation over. The problem you eventually face is that your defensive "perimeter" will consist of bases incapable of supporting each other in the face of an intelligently designed Allied offensive.
After P-38s and F4Us arrive and the Allies have established superiority in carrier air (and, as I have learned the hard way, if you can't do this by mid-'43, it's time to call in Roto-Rooter), they can pick and choose their primary axes of attack.
The ones that work best against me (and I do not consider myself to be an excellent player of the Japanese side, but I'm a tough little b1tch nonetheless) are Central and Southern Pacific concentrically isolating and neutralizing Rabaul and Truk and Southwest Pacific and the Commonwealth putting a squeeze on SRA.
What I see on the map are several bases that are potentially strong in themselves, but vulnerable to being reduced to impotence, then being captured and used by the Allies as they vault forward in late '43 through early '45. The bases that make the most difference, the way I see it, are Kwajalein, Lunga, Port Moresby, Rabaul, Truk, Palau, Soerabaja, Saipan, Rangoon, Singapore, Manila, and Okinawa. A dozen locations. There are maybe 30 more places that figure in as secondary objectives and as stepping stones, but these 12 seem to be the hinge on which the whole course of the war, and victory or defeat, turn.
That's a huge oversimplification, certainly, but in the course of a game I tend to measure my degree of success by how well I have done with regard to these major objectives.
Your results may vary. Do try this at home.
RE: Conservative Japanese Strategy
Posted: Sun Jul 30, 2006 12:06 pm
by sven6345789
what about an automatic victory in 1943? If the japanese goes after india in 1942, how do you plan to stop that?
Is attacking and expanding to reach just this result (taking India, isolating Australia fro mthe USA) a good strategy?
RE: Conservative Japanese Strategy
Posted: Sun Jul 30, 2006 12:18 pm
by Naskra
Mog, you ignorant slut. The past tense of "hoist" is "hoist."
Hoist is the past tense of hoise. Archaic, perhaps, but we're old enough to know this.
RE: Conservative Japanese Strategy
Posted: Sun Jul 30, 2006 12:45 pm
by castor troy
ORIGINAL: Naskra
Mog, you ignorant slut. The past tense of "hoist" is "hoist."
Hoist is the past tense of hoise. Archaic, perhaps, but we're old enough to know this.
I didn´t even know what hoist means before I took a look into my online dictionary. [:D]
RE: Conservative Japanese Strategy
Posted: Sun Jul 30, 2006 2:15 pm
by mogami
ORIGINAL: pasternakski
ORIGINAL: Mogami
Hi, That is where Japanese players get hoisted on their own petard.
Mog, you ignorant slut. The past tense of "hoist" is "hoist." "I am hoist today, I was hoist yesterday, and I will be hoist tomorrow."
Before one of my early attempts at playing Japan in the campaign scenario, I spent a lot of time scrolling around the map and thinking the situation over. The problem you eventually face is that your defensive "perimeter" will consist of bases incapable of supporting each other in the face of an intelligently designed Allied offensive.
After P-38s and F4Us arrive and the Allies have established superiority in carrier air (and, as I have learned the hard way, if you can't do this by mid-'43, it's time to call in Roto-Rooter), they can pick and choose their primary axes of attack.
The ones that work best against me (and I do not consider myself to be an excellent player of the Japanese side, but I'm a tough little b1tch nonetheless) are Central and Southern Pacific concentrically isolating and neutralizing Rabaul and Truk and Southwest Pacific and the Commonwealth putting a squeeze on SRA.
What I see on the map are several bases that are potentially strong in themselves, but vulnerable to being reduced to impotence, then being captured and used by the Allies as they vault forward in late '43 through early '45. The bases that make the most difference, the way I see it, are Kwajalein, Lunga, Port Moresby, Rabaul, Truk, Palau, Soerabaja, Saipan, Rangoon, Singapore, Manila, and Okinawa. A dozen locations. There are maybe 30 more places that figure in as secondary objectives and as stepping stones, but these 12 seem to be the hinge on which the whole course of the war, and victory or defeat, turn.
That's a huge oversimplification, certainly, but in the course of a game I tend to measure my degree of success by how well I have done with regard to these major objectives.
Your results may vary. Do try this at home.
HI, Well I am a high school dropout. I'll ask my sister ((The PHD in English)
Verb
to hoist (third-person singular simple present hoists, present participle hoisting, simple past hoisted, past participle hoisted)
Infinitive
to hoist
Third person singular
hoists
Simple past
hoisted
Past participle
hoisted
Present participle
hoisting
(transitive) to raise; to lift; to elevate; especially, to raise or lift to a desired elevation, by means of tackle or pulley, as a sail, a flag, a heavy package or weight.
(transitive, historical) to lift someone up to be flogged
(intransitive) to be lifted up
Quotations
They land my goods, and hoist my flying sails. — Pope
Hoisting him into his father’s throne. — South
In my opinion Lunga is of no value what so ever once Allied player retakes Port Moresby. Port Moresby will close Rabaul and that will allow movement up through northern NG. Anything Japan has on Lunga will be out of play. If the Allies gain Wewak or Hollandia then they can make the jump towards Philippines.
RE: Conservative Japanese Strategy
Posted: Sun Jul 30, 2006 6:03 pm
by pasternakski
ORIGINAL: Mogami
Hi, That is where Japanese players get hoisted on their own petard.
Sorry, Mog, you (and if your sister is in on this, too, she ought to be ashamed of herself) are suffering from the old "homonym disease."
"Hoist," as used in the expression "hoist on one's own petard" is an old post-Middle English reflexive verb that means "blown up." A "petard" is a bomb. When the bomb goes off, you are "hoist." When the bomb went off, you were "hoist." When the bomb goes off tomorrow, you will be "hoist."
The modern verb "to hoist" is a different word with its own conjugation, as depicted in your lengthy, boring, irrelevant (not you, Irrelevant) quote.
In my opinion Lunga is of no value what so ever once Allied player retakes Port Moresby. Port Moresby will close Rabaul and that will allow movement up through northern NG. Anything Japan has on Lunga will be out of play. If the Allies gain Wewak or Hollandia then they can make the jump towards Philippines.
Of course, you are right. All objectives in this game have shifting importance, depending on where the fighting is. Lunga is significant early on because of its potential to become the largest airbase between Rabaul and Noumea. It later becomes less significant, but frequently acts as a springboard for both sides - for a Japanese player in the early expansion looking to cut the connection between the U.S. and Australia, and for an Allied player later on looking to put the squeeze on Rabaul and points further northwest.
Now, let's get back to discussing the really interesting stuff, early English etymologies...
Whan that Aprille in his shoures soote...
RE: Conservative Japanese Strategy
Posted: Sun Jul 30, 2006 6:19 pm
by mogami
Hi, She had nothing to do with it. Waiting for her to vist on Monday when she can scold me as well.